MOTORCYCLE TRAVEL IN Iceland

Riding the Ring Road by motorcycle means closing the most famous loop in world motorcycle travel: 1,309 km of Route 1 connecting every region of Iceland without a single gap, ever since the road was fully paved in 1974 to mark the island's 1,100th anniversary of settlement.

The route crosses glacial outwash plains still prone to jökulhlaups (sudden floods triggered by eruptions under the ice) and still keeps 31 single-lane bridges, a leftover from an era when crossing each river meant building a full structure.

It is not a technical route — it is a route of endurance and scenery. In a single day you can go from a black volcanic canyon to a green fjord to a moss-covered lava field, without ever leaving the pavement.

Riding the Golden Circle by motorcycle is the first route almost every motorcycle traveler in Iceland does, and the reason is geological before it's touristic.

The loop links three sites that sum up the whole country: Þingvellir, where the rift between the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates literally splits the ground open (Iceland's parliament, the Althing, was founded here in 930); the Haukadalur geothermal field, where the Strokkur geyser erupts every 5 to 10 minutes; and Gullfoss waterfall, which drops in two stages into a 32-meter canyon.

Þingvellir was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2004, and in the Silfra fissure inside the same park, glacial meltwater is so clear that visibility exceeds 100 meters underwater.

It's the least technically demanding route on this list, but no Iceland motorcycle itinerary is considered complete without it.

Riding the South Coast by motorcycle covers Iceland's most photographed stretch, and for good reason: in under 400 km you pass Seljalandsfoss (a 60-meter fall you can walk behind) and Skógafoss, the same height, where legend says the first Viking settler hid a treasure chest in the cave behind the water.

Farther east, the black sand beach of Reynisfjara shows off hexagonal basalt columns and the Reynisdrangar sea stacks, but it's also one of the country's most dangerous spots: between 2007 and 2025, six deaths were recorded there from sneaker waves that surge inland without warning.

The stretch ends at Jökulsárlón, Iceland's deepest glacial lagoon (284 meters), which only formed in the 1930s when the Breiðamerkurjökull glacier began retreating, and has quadrupled in size since the 1970s. Its icebergs wash up on nearby Diamond Beach, the setting for four Hollywood films, including two James Bond movies.

Looping the Snæfellsnes Peninsula by motorcycle is the go-to day trip for riders who don't have time for the full Ring Road, because it packs almost every Icelandic landscape into 220 km.

The skyline is dominated by the Snæfellsjökull glacier-volcano, 1,446 meters tall, visible from Reykjavík on clear days and famous since 1864 as the entrance Jules Verne chose for Journey to the Center of the Earth.

The area around the volcano has been a national park since 2001 and in 2025 earned UNESCO Biosphere Reserve status; it was also, in 2008, the first region in Iceland and in Europe certified as a sustainable destination by EarthCheck.

Between the fishing villages of Arnarstapi and Hellnar, the route hugs basalt cliffs and seabird colonies before closing the loop along the peninsula's north coast.

Riding the Diamond Circle by motorcycle is the northern version of the Golden Circle, with the advantage of still seeing only a fraction of its tourist traffic.

The loop circles Lake Mývatn, formed about 2,300 years ago by a basaltic eruption and nicknamed "midge lake" for the swarms of midges that appear in summer; on its south shore, the Skútustaðir pseudocraters are a textbook example of steam explosions over waterlogged sediment.

The other highlight is Dettifoss, dropping 44 meters over a 100-meter width, considered the second most powerful waterfall in Europe after the Rhine Falls, and the setting for the opening scene of the film Prometheus (2012).

The loop closes in Húsavík, Iceland's whale-watching capital, with the active Krafla volcano visible on the horizon for most of the ride.

Riding the Westfjords loop by motorcycle is the trip most adventure motorcyclists name as Iceland's best, precisely because it's the country's least visited region: just 7,341 residents across 8,842 km², the lowest population density in Iceland.

The coastline is so cut up by fjords that the roads turn slow and winding — every bay forces a full detour — until the Vestfjarðagöng tunnel, opened in 1996, finally shortened the distance between Ísafjörður and its neighboring towns.

At the western tip, the Látrabjarg cliffs form the largest bird cliff in the North Atlantic and mark Iceland's westernmost point; the region is also home to the country's largest Arctic fox population and to Drangajökull, the only glacier in the Westfjords.

It's the route on this list that demands the most self-sufficiency: hours can pass between fjords without a single town in between.

Crossing the Kjölur route by motorcycle is, for most riders, the gateway into Iceland's highlands: it's the country's most-traveled F-road because it connects south and north through the interior without the more dangerous fords found on other tracks.

The road runs across a plateau at 600-700 meters between two glaciers, Langjökull and Hofsjökull, historically marked with stone cairns (vörður) that guided travelers since the early settlement period, when the route was already mentioned in the Icelandic sagas.

In the 18th century, a snowstorm killed a group of travelers mid-crossing and the route fell out of use for nearly a century, only being rediscovered in the 1800s.

Halfway along, the Hveravellir hot springs — where, according to tradition, the outlaw Fjalla-Eyvindur once hid — remain a warm oasis today in the middle of a volcanic stone desert.

Reaching Landmannalaugar by motorcycle means entering the northern end of the Laugavegur trail, Iceland's most famous hike, but through the door motorcyclists use: 90 km of F208 or F225 track along the edge of the Laugahraun lava field, formed by an eruption around 1477.

The landscape is unique in the country for its color: rhyolite mountains ranging from pink to green to ochre, the result of a volcanic composition different from the black basalt that dominates the rest of Iceland.

On arrival, natural hot springs allow for a warm soak in the middle of a mountain desert, and since 2024 access to the parking area has required a reservation because of how much traffic the site now receives each season.

It's one of the routes most cited in adventure motorcycle forums for tricky river crossings: the fords change depth from one day to the next depending on the meltwater.

Crossing Sprengisandur by motorcycle means repeating the route Icelanders themselves avoided during the Commonwealth period (930-1262), when it was one of the few direct paths to Þingvellir but required crossing hundreds of kilometers of desert with no fodder for horses and no settlements along the way.

The name combines "sandur" (volcanic sand desert) and "sprengja" (to burst a horse from hard riding): medieval travelers had to gallop flat out to avoid running out of supplies halfway across.

Today the Sprengisandsleið track runs between the Hofsjökull and Vatnajökull glaciers through a lunar landscape of black ash, and only a tourist bus covers it in summer, every other day, between Landmannalaugar and Mývatn.

Along with Askja, it's the route most cited in motorcycle-travel forums as "the real Sprengisandur" — the crossing that separates the tourist from the adventure motorcyclist.

Reaching Askja by motorcycle means entering one of Iceland's most remote volcanic calderas, 100 km down the F88 track from Route 1, and the site where NASA trained 32 Apollo astronauts because of its resemblance to the lunar surface — commemorated today at the Astronaut Monument in Húsavík.

The caldera still holds the memory of the 1875 eruption, a VEI-5 event whose ash covered more than 5,000 km² and devastated livestock across much of the country.

Inside the crater, Lake Víti (Icelandic for "hell") was a warm geothermal lake right after the eruption; today it stays frozen most of the year, at 1,516 meters above sea level.

It's the most isolated route on this list and has the shortest season of all: access runs only from late June to early October, and even then there's zero margin for error on fuel.